SPEAKERS

Anton Koenig, Video Demo, Christian Klepp, Ren Agarwal

Christian Klepp  00:00

In a competitive business environment where content is king. Cost, time and editing skills remain massive obstacles for many brands. So how can teams overcome this barrier entry and leverage technology to produce quality content at scale? Today, we’re looking at a tool that claims to create and edit videos in minutes with AI, welcome to the Marketing Demo Lab Series, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today, my co host Rena Garwell, and I are diving into videogen.io with one of its founders, Anton Koenig, let’s dive in. Folks, welcome to Marketing Demo Lab. This is Christian Klepp, and I’m joined here by my co host Ren Agarwal, and our special guest on today is Anton Koenig from the company VideoGen. Anton, welcome to the show.

Anton Koenig  00:51

Happy to be on.

Christian Klepp  00:54

Great to have you here. Anton. I mean, we’re really looking forward to this week. You know, we’ve had a couple of conversations with you, and we’ve also like Ren and I have taken your tool on a test drive, I’m going to say, so I think we’re really excited to, like, show the audience what VideoGen can do. So let’s dive right in. I am going to just kick it off with the first question, and then you can go ahead and share your screen. So we’ll start with, I guess, like the why and the who, right. Let’s start with that category. So we’ve seen a lot of like, AI video tools lately, but you focused on something like that’s called repeatal workflow. So how would a typical marketer use VideoGen?

Anton Koenig  01:36

You might notice that Gemini and ChatGPT started citing YouTube videos now when they’re when they’re asked a question. So let’s say I asked chatGPT. You know if I’m selling a beauty product, and someone’s asking ChatGPT, you know what is the best beauty product for myself? ChatGPT is going to go and it’s going to search for videos on YouTube. It’s also going to search through blog articles. And if you have the most relevant video to what the user is looking for, then you might be the first one to show up in those results. So anytime that you need to create a lot of content, if you’re AB testing ads, if you’re creating kind of bulk content to target a bunch of different niches, or if you just have multiple products, multiple channels, people will go to VideoGen, and it saves them time, and it saves them money as well, because they don’t need to hire a huge team of editors.

Christian Klepp  02:36

Right, right? So you kind of brought this up already. I just want to go back to it, right? So let’s say, like, how would this tool, like, help somebody, like a marketer who’s test specifically, like with SEO, so for example, turning blogs in a video or or outbound marketing, so something like personalized video at scale?

Anton Koenig  02:55

Yeah. So we see a mix of both. One of our kind of first use cases was people taking existing blog articles, especially if they have a library that they’ve already built out, and just adding a new format so generating videos from those articles. What you typically do is you find the article. You can just copy and paste all of the text into VideoGen. You can put it directly in, or maybe you could ask it to reword it to be more of a video script style, and then you just click Generate, and you can choose a duration. So let’s say I have a short article, but I want to make a video that’s longer, I could paste that script into video chain, and just like ChatGPT or any sort of AI writing tool. It can expand the script, and then I would have a video that I could post onto YouTube or embed directly in that in that blog article. So let’s say my goal is to increase engagement. I probably want to embed that video in the blog article. My you know, time, time spent on the website, would go up, and then I would start getting better rankings on Google, and then I’d also show up on that video tab on Google. So SEO is definitely one of the the best use cases, I would say, for the technology in its current state.

Christian Klepp  04:15

Yeah.

Ren Agarwal  04:15

That’s kind of interesting. It’s like repurposing content for a purpose that isn’t necessarily for somebody to consume the video. It’s more for SEO purposes.

Anton Koenig  04:26

So these people are very constrained because they don’t have the time to to create video themselves. They don’t have necessarily the resources to hire a video team or hire like a video production agency, and they need video production fast, so they’ll come to to Video Gen, and it’ll save them time. It’ll get them to their to their goals much faster.

Christian Klepp  04:52

It’s interesting that you said that like, and I want to, I want to ask you about that like, in terms of saving time. And and perhaps even saving money. Like, how much time would you say people are saving using Video Gen versus if they outsource it to your traditional like, video production company?

Anton Koenig  05:13

Well, so that Okay, so the people that are saving the most time are are going to be the video production companies where you can’t even quantify it, because, you know, now they’re able to create 100 videos per day, whereas previously they were able to create maybe five videos per day.

Christian Klepp  05:32

Right.

Anton Koenig  05:33

So you can’t really even begin to quantify it’s almost like a level unlock for that business, but for the person who’s kind of that small business marketer, you know, they’re saving themselves kind of a few hours every time they work on a video. So previously, they would have to build it from scratch. Or, you know, if they’re hiring someone, you have to go through multiple different freelancers, different agencies, it can be a pretty painful process, especially if you have a smaller budget. So just, just interviewing someone, or in your doing, the sales calls can be multiple hours of time. So I’d say, you know, like, three hours of time per videos is pretty standard. And here you see a bit of what I’m talking about with these workflows,

Christian Klepp  06:24

Right.

Anton Koenig  06:25

So these are the six publicly available workflows that we offer, script to video, voice over to video, record, upload AI video editor, which is kind of like a blank project, and then generate AI clip. So I’ve mostly been focused on is the script to video workflow. This is actually the first workflow that we launched, and still to this day, it’s our most popular. Some of these other ones are a bit more advanced, so might need to know a little bit more about video editing if you’re jumping straight into the AI video editor, but you can get higher quality results if you spend more time.

Christian Klepp  07:07

Sure.

Anton Koenig  07:09

I’ll jump straight into script to video.

Christian Klepp  07:11

Yeah, start with that one.

Ren Agarwal  07:13

So this is somebody’s written a script, and they want to convert that immediately into a into a video.

Anton Koenig  07:20

So if you have a written script, you can paste it in, or if you just have a script idea, you can actually generate it with AI. Because I don’t have a script ready, I’ll just generate something with AI…

Christian Klepp  07:32

or something,

Anton Koenig  07:34

Yep, so it’s pretty similar to something like ChatGPT, where you have this front box, I can upload some media, and it’s going to actually include that in my script, and it’ll look at those images as it’s writing the script. I can change the narrator. “Welcome to the future of video.”

Anton Koenig  07:57

I’m not sure if the audio goes through on.

Ren Agarwal  07:59

Yeah, it does.

Christian Klepp  08:00

It does, it does, yeah, we heard it,

Anton Koenig  08:02

okay, yeah. So I have a few different narrators here to choose from.

Christian Klepp  08:06

Okay,

Anton Koenig  08:07

Another very popular use case is creating content and other languages.

Christian Klepp  08:13

Yeah,

Anton Koenig  08:14

Yeah. There’s a lot of like media companies, or maybe kind of like media organizations within a larger company that needs to repurpose their content in 10 or even 20 different languages, and doing that without AI is very painful.

Ren Agarwal  08:32

Yes,

Anton Koenig  08:33

you can choose from pretty much any language you know across like any accent, just sticking with the default voice. Here, I can also add an AI avatar. AI avatars are super useful for like e learning content we find where you’re trying to guide a user through a process. Maybe if you’re doing a little more personalized content, you might want to use an avatar,

Christian Klepp  09:00

Right.

Anton Koenig  09:02

And then there’s kind of some more options here. I’ll just stick with the default voice. And any ideas off the top of your head for a script?

Christian Klepp  09:11

I mean, I was, I was just gonna ask, like, this might sound like a guided question, but how, what are the quality? What was the quality of the the AI generated script? Like…

Anton Koenig  09:21

Sure. Okay, so I have a prompt here…

Christian Klepp  09:24

Okay.

Anton Koenig  09:25

Video explaining the value of video Gen for marketer at a consumer goods company like PNG, and introduce the features and benefits of the product.

Christian Klepp  09:35

Okay,

Anton Koenig  09:38

I think I’ll start with this, and I can show you guys some more features here, but you know, we can control the duration. I ll stick with the auto duration for now.

Christian Klepp  09:49

Yep,

Anton Koenig  09:50

we click Generate script. So here the AI is essentially like an AI agent. Is which is going to go out, do some research and then use, like a large language model to generate a script based prompt

Christian Klepp  10:09

That didn’t take very long at all.

Anton Koenig  10:12

Yep, speed is definitely like the main reason that people will come to us,

Christian Klepp  10:17

Sure, sure.

Ren Agarwal  10:20

Now though, so it probably has a tone to it. Can, can we change the tone? Let’s say we want to make it feels a little formal. What if I want to make it a little bit, let’s say

Christian Klepp  10:34

Like casual, or like, like approachable, like kind of, like friendly tone, something like that,

Ren Agarwal  10:39

Friendly? Yeah, yeah, I think that’s good,

Anton Koenig  10:42

Sure,

Ren Agarwal  10:43

Friendly and speaking directly to, let’s say, a marketing specialist who you know, maybe has, you know, three years of experience,

Christian Klepp  10:55

right, sure,

Ren Agarwal  10:56

And is researching solutions for her team,

Anton Koenig  11:10

Sure, so I just go to rewrite script and then anything that I want to add, like a tone guidance or a style guidance, I would Just add directly in the prompt, and I can regenerate. So you can do this as many times as you want. Yeah, another important control here is visual style at the top. So here you can say whether you want stock footage or AI generated footage,

Christian Klepp  11:40

Okay

Anton Koenig  11:41

And then free stock. This is going to pull from a bunch of copyright free like royalty free stock footage sites,

Christian Klepp  11:49

okay, splash or something, pixel Bay, right?

Anton Koenig  11:54

Exactly. So all of the assets are going to be copyright free, but you’re not going to get quite the same protections that you get with premium iStock. So if you’re a company like PNG, you probably want to be using iStock,

Christian Klepp  12:09

yeah,

Anton Koenig  12:09

and then AI image. This is using like a generative image model behind the hood. So instead of choosing stock footage is it’s going to create a unique image for every single segment the script.

Christian Klepp  12:23

You know, you’ve used the AI to generate the script, and you’ve started to populate the left side like where it says layout with images on. Can we see what the what the video would look like if you clicked on the Generate video? Let’s generate it.

Anton Koenig  12:34

Yeah, yep. Let’s go for you. So here now we go straight into the video editor. If you’ve used a video editor before, this should look pretty familiar.

Christian Klepp  12:59

Yes.

Anton Koenig  13:00

Bottom you have the timeline where you can control all of the timings of the elements. And then we have a bunch of tools on the left sidebar. Most users will spend a lot of time on the script tool, just kind of refining how it sounds, because once you read the script, it’s a little different than hearing it narrated back at you.

Christian Klepp  13:20

Sure

Anton Koenig  13:21

people will kind of go back and forth here. They might even change the voice after they’ve generated it. So I’ll go directly.

Video Demo  13:29

VideoGen is a cutting edge platform designed to empower marketers in consumer goods companies with innovative video solutions in an industry where capturing attention and driving engagement are increasingly challenging. VideoGen offers tools tailored to address the specific needs of professionals like you. By streamlining video creation and enabling personalized content at scale, it helps brands stand out in a crowded marketplace. As consumer expectations evolve and competition intensifies, leveraging advanced video technology becomes essential for effective storytelling and sustained growth. VideoGen sets the stage for marketers to meet these demands with agility and creativity. VideoGen offers a suite of powerful features designed it to transform the way marketers create video content, its AI powered voice over technology enables users to generate natural sounding narration quickly and effortlessly. Customizable templates provide a flexible Foundation, allowing for easy adaptation to different brands and campaign goals. With rapid content generation, teams can produce videos at scale without sacrificing quality.

Anton Koenig  14:44

This voice, Matilda, is more of a formal voice, so we would go through the voice library and find something that suits us more

Video Demo  14:54

Welcome to the future of video. VideoGen makes it easy for anyone to start creating.

Anton Koenig  14:59

So, I know. There’s one voice in particular. Some of these premium voices, you’ll see each of these has a little star next to it,

Christian Klepp  15:07

yeah?

Anton Koenig  15:07

So the ones with the purple star are actually some of the most modern voices.

Christian Klepp  15:12

Okay,

Video Demo  15:13

welcome to the future of video. VideoGen makes it easy for

Ren Agarwal  15:18

what a difference!

Christian Klepp  15:19

Yeah, yeah.

Anton Koenig  15:20

So we can choose Axel for this one,

Christian Klepp  15:24

yeah.

Anton Koenig  15:24

And then I’m going to click Apply to all, because you’ll see that the video is broken up into sections. So I need a section,

Christian Klepp  15:32

yeah?

Anton Koenig  15:32

And then I can also edit my script if I want, yeah. You know, maybe I don’t like this phrasing,

Christian Klepp  15:42

yeah.

Ren Agarwal  15:42

So Anton, like, I’m really very interested in, like, show us how to replace the B roll here. You know, let’s just kind of select some other radio. How would we do that?

Anton Koenig  15:52

Sure. So let’s maybe start with this asset. My one of my favorite features is this auto replace button here in the tunnel, right? Okay,

Christian Klepp  16:03

yeah, yeah.

Anton Koenig  16:05

So anytime I have B roll, I just click Auto replace, or I use a which is a keyboard shortcut, and then the AI is just going to automatically research that library. So if I want to quickly find a new asset, I can go here. One thing I’m noticing is it really wants to stick with this crowded market theme, which maybe isn’t the most appropriate for our video,

Christian Klepp  16:32

sure.

Anton Koenig  16:34

So in that case, pick case, we can just click replace, and then I can search through, through the any library of stock,

Christian Klepp  16:44

right?

Anton Koenig  16:45

This search is going to be aI powered, so you can basically describe what you’re looking for, and we’ve indexed all of this content in like a an AI enabled database. So, you know, let’s say looking for so

Christian Klepp  17:03

It can filter it out essentially,

Ren Agarwal  17:06

yeah, I feel like a, let’s say like an event, conference or something like that.

Anton Koenig  17:12

Yeah, so conference, and then maybe I want conference with people. I yeah, maybe, maybe I’ll choose this one.

Christian Klepp  17:26

Yep.

Video Demo  17:29

Marketplace, as consumer expectations evolve and competition intensifies, leveraging advanced video,

Anton Koenig  17:38

yeah, I can also, when I click Replace, you’ll see I’m on free stock right now. Oops, I’m on free stock. But if I go back and click on this media tools button, then we can choose from any of the tools. So I can choose from our Getty library. I can generate it with AI, or I could use something like a shape if I was building something more advanced.

Ren Agarwal  18:06

Now, let’s say we’ve got a finished product here. Maybe we’ve brought in some product specific video footage for the narration. We’ve tweaked the the the script. We’ve put in a new voice over. Now we need to kind of send that out into the world. Tell us about that.

Anton Koenig  18:26

Yep. So this depends on your workflow. For a company like PNG, they’re probably going to have an approval process, a review process, so you can share your videos, similar to how you can share a Google Doc, so I can click Share on this top right, this blue button, and then I can send it via email to any of my co workers or collaborators. Once I’ve reviewed the video, then I can either export it as like an MP4 for so I click download, or I can create a link. The shareable view link

Christian Klepp  19:09

say that there’s a there’s a team in there that is, you know, they’re responsible for producing videos, assets for a specific brand within PNG. Would your would your platform be able to help them ensure that, like, for example, they they have the same brand voice, um, that there’s some kind of consistency, like, maybe, that they use B roll that’s on brand. And I know a lot of it really depends on the client. Like, that’s not entirely like, within your control. But is there any way, is there any way that this platform can help them to do that right, like so, for instance, you’ve created this video. How to how do you ensure that they can replicate videos that are similar to this?

Anton Koenig  19:49

Yep, so we have, like, a combination of features that address that,

Christian Klepp  19:54

okay,

Anton Koenig  19:56

the public facing one is presets.

Christian Klepp  19:59

Okay,

Anton Koenig  20:00

so this allows you to create essentially style guidelines,

Christian Klepp  20:06

right?

Anton Koenig  20:07

So if I click Create preset here on the presets tab, I can add writing style guidelines, and then I can also add a knowledge base so I can pull from that information every time it writes the script,

Christian Klepp  20:22

right, okay, right, right.

Anton Koenig  20:24

And I can customize the caption style, which so I can always be, like, using the right brand colors and the right ones font

Christian Klepp  20:31

and all that colors and

Anton Koenig  20:33

yeah. And then privately, we do have, like, separate approval pipelines, but this is something that you know right now is just in like a private beta, they might create three videos using this script to video workflow, just to get their ideas out there. And then on their third one, they might feel like, okay, this is a good starting point. And then they edit from there so they don’t have to start with a blank project or a template. They can just start with something that’s a little more custom,

Christian Klepp  21:07

right?

Ren Agarwal  21:08

I mean, 100 videos. I mean, that is remarkable. What I mean, I’m just trying to think about use cases on what they’re doing with all that video content.

Anton Koenig  21:17

100 is a lot. I mean, we do have some, some pretty large media companies that use us. So they will be distributing video across 20 different languages, different countries, multiple media channels.

Ren Agarwal  21:34

I see

Anton Koenig  21:35

people are going to create when they need to create. So our new pricing model is going to be low subscription for access. So that subscription starts at it’s 144 bucks a year if you get the yearly subscription, or 24 bucks a month for monthly that gives you access to the platform, and it gives you some allotted amount of credits, and then any additional usage is just going to be charged per use. So if you’re, like, heavily using these generative AI models inside of the platform, that’s just going to be charged one off.

Christian Klepp  22:11

Yeah, that totally makes sense. I mean, exactly like what you said. If you’re, if the if the amount of like work, like the volume of work fluctuates from month to month, and sometimes people will have difficulty justifying that, that subscription they’re paying for, whereas, if you’re, if you’re using this, this new pricing model, it might, you know, it might be more, it might be easier to like, incentivize them to to invest.

Anton Koenig  22:43

Yeah,

Christian Klepp  22:45

absolutely, absolutely. So, gentlemen, we are at the top of the hour. And Anton, I want to thank you for coming on the show today and for taking us on another test drive of this great platform that you have. Please just a quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you, especially if they’re interested in creating videos,

Anton Koenig  23:05

sure. So thanks for having me. You can find us on our website, videogen.io, if you Google VideoGen, it should pop up. We serve large companies, small companies. So if you’d like to try it, you can try it for free on our website, and then if you’re interested in more of a business plan, there’s going to be a CTA there to reach out to us.

Christian Klepp  23:30

Fantastic, fantastic. Thanks again for your time. Anton,

Ren Agarwal  23:34

Thanks, Anton,

Anton Koenig  23:36

Thank you so much for having me.